The Xbox Intervention
by SinfulPerfection
Summary: Kurt and the girls feel that their boyfriends are neglecting them in favor of playing Xbox, so they hatch a plan to disable the console.  Unfortunately, the plan has unintended consequences.


**A/N: Hey guys, just a little one-shot that randomly popped into my head yesterday :) Enjoy.**

Rachel sat down at the table in the corner of the Puckerman's basement and stuffed a handful of grapes on her mouth. "I don't get it," she said unhappily. "This was supposed to be a Glee Club bonding party. Why are all the boys playing Xbox?"

"Welcome to my life," Tina said from beside her, sipping on a Coke. "Mike plays _all _the time. He was playing Xbox at his own house before we came over here!"

"Well, Finn doesn't usually do this," Rachel said with a frown. "He knows how important these Glee Club events are to me. He promised he would help facilitate conversation between members to encourage a sense of togetherness that will help us when we're competing in Nationals."

"Face it, honey," Kurt said, letting his head drop onto the table. "You and Finn are in the comfort zone. That 'I love Glee Club' shtick was useful when he was courting you, but honestly, he has you now and he doesn't need to be your bitch anymore. Trust me. Blaine is the exact same way."

Rachel crossed her arms angrily over her chest. "I refuse to believe that's the case," she said. To prove her point, she looked over to the couch where the boys were playing and called out, "Finn!"

"What, Rachel?" Finn called back, his eyes never leaving the screen.

"Can you come here for a minute, please?"

"Not right now," Finn said distractedly. "Blaine and I are about to beat Puck and Artie. One sec." Something happened on the screen and Finn jumped up in excitement. "Nice shot!" he said, reaching over to give Blaine a high-five.

"But Finn-" Rachel began, but her boyfriend seemed to have completely forgotten that she existed. She slumped back in her chair angrily.

"Don't feel too bad," Lauren's voice came unexpectedly from the other side of her. Rachel hadn't realized that the other girl was listening. "If you bring it up later, you can get him to do all sorts of things for you. Like last time Puck blew me off to play Mario Kart," she looked around and lowered her voice. Kurt and Tina leaned in interestedly. "He agreed to go down-"

"Okay, whoa," Rachel said, backing away. "I don't need to hear about it."

"That wasn't even the whole story," Lauren protested, but Rachel shook her head.

"I don't care. Besides, I don't think that we should stand for this. We shouldn't just let them ignore us this way in the hopes that they'll make it up to us later. If we do that, their behavior will never change. We need to put a stop to this once and for all." Rachel stood up, prepared to march over to the T.V. "I'll pry that controller out of Finn's hands if I have to."

"Okay, chill for a second," Kurt said, standing up too, prepared to restrain Rachel if necessary. "I want them to stop playing as much as you do, but I'd rather not be a bitch about it. I mean, no offense, but things like this are what keep your relationship with Finn so tenuous. Blaine and I have something solid, and I'd like it to stay that way."

"Yeah, I agree, I don't want Mike to think I'm PMS-ing," Tina said. "Besides, it's not that bad. I think Quinn and Mercedes were about to start a game of Go Fish." She glanced across the room to where the two girls were sitting. Quinn was shuffling and reshuffling a deck of cards while she stared off into space. Mercedes looked like she had fallen asleep.

"Yeah, I'm not down with that at all," Lauren said, shaking her head at the girls. "Besides, we can still stop them from playing without actually having to go all hormonal bitch on their asses."

"Okay," Rachel said, sitting back down. "But how?"

"Well," Lauren said, smiling smugly. "You may not have realized, but I have gotten to know the Puckerman household quite well over the last couple of months."

"Yeah, we know," Tina interrupted. "You bring it up at least every other day."

Lauren narrowed her eyes at Tina. "Fine. But anyway, I basically know this place like the palm of my hand. Two words, girls," she said. "Circuit. Breaker."

Rachel snorted in disbelief. Kurt and Tina, however, exchanged interested looks. "That might just work," Kurt pointed out. "They would never know it was us."

"You know where it is?" Tina asked Lauren. "And which switch to use?"

Lauren nodded. "Oh, yeah," she said. "I know _exactly_ how to bring this mother down."

* * *

><p>Rachel hadn't been entirely on board with the plan at first, but when the four of them had excused themselves to go upstairs and Finn hadn't even glanced up to see where she was going, she had made up her mind. "Let's do this, quick," she hissed to Lauren as they tiptoed to the back door.<p>

"Chill out, Blueberry. I don't want Puckerman's mom to see us and get suspicious," Lauren replied. The group neared the back door when suddenly they found themselves blocked by something very large. And very hairy.

"Oh shit, I am not dealing with this," Kurt said, backing away. "I hate dogs."

"Aw, Kurt, come on," Rachel said, walking forwards. "He looks friendly." She walked towards the dog and held out a hand. Suddenly, the dog lunged forward with a loud bark. "Crap!" Rachel shrieked, backing away.

"Be quiet!" Lauren whisper-yelled.

"Then you do something about it!" Rachel whispered back. "It hates me!"

"Well he hates me, too," Lauren said. "We once had a showdown over a piece of steak. I won. And he still remembers."

Tina raised her eyebrows. "Fine," she said. "I'll do it." She inched towards the dog with her hand outstretched. "Here, puppy," she cooed. "Good boy." The dog warily moved towards Tina's hand and began to lick it furiously. "Hah. I did it."

"Good, now—take him out of here," Kurt said in disgust. "He'll get hair on my clothes."

"Aw poor guy, he just wants to play," Tina said. "We should take him downstairs. He's lonely."

Lauren scratched his head. "You know, I'm not really feeling that sympathetic right now. Remember the steak, Bugsy?" The dog looked at Lauren and growled. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"If we take him downstairs, he'll just be neglected like the rest of us," Rachel pointed out.

"Alright, whatever," Tina said, leading Bugsy away from the door and towards the kitchen. As soon as he was out of the way, Lauren opened the back door and the four of them went outside.

"Stay close to the house," Lauren mouthed as they crept along the outside wall of the house to get to the circuit breaker. They tiptoed gingerly over the grass. At one point, Lauren stepped on a twig, and they all froze for several seconds before continuing on.

"Is this discretion really necessary?" Kurt asked. "I mean, it looks more suspicious if anyone looks outside and we're tiptoeing around. If we just acted normal, like we were coming to hang out-"

"Hummel, let me tell you something," Lauren interrupted. "I have been on a total of twenty-five covert missions in my high school career. If I'm not mistaken, your very own Rachel Berry once hired me to mic the choir room, isn't that right, Rachel?"

"Uh," Rachel stuttered awkwardly. "That may or may not have happened."

"Point is, I know how to be discreet. I basically invented the word. So if you want to be able to spend the rest of this party staring into the eyes of your girly boyfriend, Hummel, this is what you have to do. Stay. Close. To the wall."

"Fine," Kurt muttered, grudgingly moving closer to the wall.

"How do you even know the location of the electrical panel in Puck's house?" Rachel asked. "I'm pretty sure I don't know where it is in my own house."

"I'm a mechanically inclined person," Lauren said. "And it's always important to know the location of the circuit breakers. One day, Berry, you're going to be doing some minor repairs on some faulty wiring in your bedroom, and you'll be sitting there with your wire stripper and your continuity tester and you're going to think to yourself 'Oh, if only I knew how to turn off the circuit!' But it won't do you any good, because you will have died of electric shock."

Rachel frowned. "That whole scenario sounds highly unlikely...for a number of reasons."

"Electrocution is not as unlikely as you might think," Lauren replied. They crept forward several more feet until they finally reached the electrical panel. Lauren stepped away from the wall and opened the panel as everyone gathered around to watch. "Now, this is a very delicate operation," she said as the eyed the panel of switches, "so I don't want anyone else trying to tell me what to do. If I recall correctly, the basement switch is...second from the left...bottom row. Or is it second from the right? Let's see..."

"Um, Lauren?" Tina said hesitantly. "They're labeled."

"No, I know that, but I don't trust the labels because they're usually in some sort of code. Like, 'Living Room'? Not a real place! Unless there's a 'Dying Room,' we can't rule anything out. The point is, anything could be anywhere."

Kurt looked at Rachel and mouthed '_Anything could be anywhere_?' Rachel just shrugged in response. "What we need," Lauren continued, "is some sort of indication that a particular switch corresponds to the basement."

Tina pointed to one of the switches. "I'm pretty sure this is it."

"Like I said earlier, you're interpreting the code the way you want to. Humans have a tendency to see patterns that aren't really there. You want to think that you found the switch to the basement because of some sort of label, but labels are often misleading." Lauren closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "Think!" she said to herself. "Where was it last time?"

"Lauren!" Tina snapped. "This switch is labeled with the word 'Basement.' I'm pretty sure this isn't a code!"

Lauren opened her eyes. She looked at the switch that Tina was pointing to for a long time. Finally, she reached forward and flipped it off, giving Tina a frightening glare in the process. "I found it," she announced to the group. "It's the one labeled 'Basement.'"

"Good work, Lauren," Tina squeaked.

* * *

><p>As the girls and Kurt arrived back inside, they heard commotion downstairs. There was muffled yelling and something hard definitely hit the wall. The foursome hurried into the living room and adopted casual positions on the couches just as Mercedes and Quinn emerged from the basement. "Something happened to the T.V.," Quinn said. "We wanted to get out before they killed someone."<p>

"Yeah, Puck was about to beat the level with the dragon," Mercedes said with a snort. "And then everything shut off. It was hilarious."

Everyone looked at each other uncertainly before breaking out into forced laughter. "How inopportune!" Rachel exclaimed. The laughter stopped as five heads turned to look at her. "I mean...that sucks," she corrected.

"Yeah, they're trying to fix it, but they probably won't be able to," Mercedes said with a shrug. "So I guess the party can finally start, huh?"

"I guess so," Kurt said with a satisfied nod.

They sat quietly as, one by one, the boys came up from the basement. All of them looked rather angry and dissatisfied. Finn and Puck came last, carrying Artie's wheelchair. "Hey guys," Finn said as they set Artie down. "What are you up to?"

"Just talking," Rachel replied. She smiled widely as Finn came and sat next to her on the couch, putting his arm around her. She snuggled her head into his chest.

"Talking, huh?" Puck said, sitting down next to Lauren. "Hey baby girl," he said.

Lauren glared in response. "You owe me one, Puckerman," she growled. Then she leaned forward to whisper in his ear. Puck's face lit up in delight.

"Ugh," Tina said, looking away. Mike came and sat down next to her, placing a kiss on her lips. "Hey, cutie," she said.

"Hey back," he responded, pulling her into his lap. Blaine took the place that Tina had just vacated, sitting next to Kurt.

"I didn't get a chance to tell you earlier, but you look hot today," he murmured in Kurt's ear.

Kurt's face broke into a grin. "These are new clothes. You noticed!"

"Of course I noticed," Blaine said, nuzzling into Kurt's neck.

"Well," Artie said, surveying the scene in front of him. "I guess I should go find Brittany." He wheeled himself out of the room and went down the hallway.

"Sorry about your game," Rachel said to the guys.

"It's alright," Finn said with a shrug. "Puck was kind of kicking our asses, anyway."

"That's my boy," Lauren said proudly, rubbing the top of his mohawk.

"How were you doing, Blaine?" Kurt asked. "Blaine's not particularly hand-eye coordinated," he explained to the group.

"How would you know that?" Sam asked suggestively, and everyone began to laugh as Kurt's face turned bright red.

"That's not what I meant," he said, sinking down into the couch. Blaine just laughed and kissed Kurt on the cheek. Suddenly, there was commotion down the hallway. A door slammed, and a moment later, Artie came into view, wheeling himself as fast as he could possibly go. Brittany came out a second later, wearing only shorts and a bra, holding her t-shirt in her hand. Everyone awkwardly tried to avoid looking at her as she followed Artie towards the front door with a worried look on her face.

"It's not what it looks like! We were just talking!" she insisted. "It was an accident! I was changing my shirt and she was helping me!" Artie yanked the front door open and rolled onto the porch. "The plumbing was different!" Brittany called after him. "Shit." She shook out the shirt that was bunched up in her hand and pulled it over her head, struggling to get her arms through the right holes. "Artie, wait!" she said, running outside.

Everyone in the room looked at each other, wide-eyed and bewildered. Before anyone could speak, however, they heard the door in the hallway slam again, and moments later, Santana appeared in their midst. Her hair was disheveled and her shirt was on backwards, and she had a dangerous look on her face.

"Alright," she said in a low voice, glaring at each of them in turn. "Who turned off the fucking Xbox?"


End file.
